Traffic and life on the road in Chennai

This is a discussion on Traffic and life on the road in Chennai within Street Experiences, part of the Buckle Up category; Licence renewal time.
Spent a couple of hours at Thiruvanmiyur RTO yesterday. Why-oh-why do people think that they have to ...

Spent a couple of hours at Thiruvanmiyur RTO yesterday. Why-oh-why do people think that they have to be in physical contact with the person in front of them when queuing? Particularly surprising was the fact that the first offender was a woman.

The second offender was a helmet-in-hand biker. When I pointed out the temperature and asked for some space he was quite apologetic --- but didn't much modify the actual behaviour. I could only think, "I bet you drive like this too!"

Had gone to Saidapet for some work. When we (self and wife) returned, this is what greeted us (in case of doubts - the boxed-in i10 is mine).

Fortunately the office of the political party represented by the flag was easy to locate in the vicinity; though the owner of the vehicle took a further 15-20 minutes to deign to move the vehicle. This photo clicked in the interim.

Why-oh-why do people think that they have to be in physical contact with the person in front of them when queuing?

Seems like the first offender fancies you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by binand

Had gone to Saidapet for some work. When we (self and wife) returned, this is what greeted us (in case of doubts - the boxed-in i10 is mine).

Fortunately the office of the political party represented by the flag was easy to locate in the vicinity; though the owner of the vehicle took a further 15-20 minutes to deign to move the vehicle. This photo clicked in the interim.

If so, it wasn't mutual --- and wife was sitting a couple of metres away anyway .

Picked up the licence the following Friday. I was probably an hour or two early as it wasn't in the guy's pile: he asked me to wait five minutes, went and found it, with its paperwork, put it through his system and now I have a nice new, blue, shiny smartcard licence. I wonder if it will make me any smarter!

Friendly and efficient. They must have to be tough to work at the RTO, though, handling the difficult customers.

Did you post this on the Chennai City Traffic Police Facebook page (without blurring out the number plate that is)? We can see if they have the balls to take action!

Nope. I don't really like the idea of needing a Facebook account and stuff to make a complaint to local law & order folks. Anyway, that particular flag is not really the flavour of the month in Chennai/TN; the cops might even take action.

Nope. I don't really like the idea of needing a Facebook account and stuff to make a complaint to local law & order folks. Anyway, that particular flag is not really the flavour of the month in Chennai/TN; the cops might even take action.

Good one! And yes, they might have taken action.

On the facebook page, how it has been helping is that people are posting photographic evidence of violations on a public forum and the police sometimes cannot ignore it or squish it under the table when that happens.
They have even admitted to have fined auto's for not going by meter fare
(in Chennai ) , but we have no means to ascertain if that actually has happened.

Bad Judgement:
Thanks to the Occupy Mount Road movement, I come from Chamiers Road on Cenotaph Road, and hang a U where it meets Mt. Rd., to take the first left, into CIT colony. This road then leads me to SIET college road, and I motor on to TTK road and travel parallel to Mt.Rd. till Gemini.

Yesterday, I saw this young couple walking hand in hand in the middle of the road, inside CIT colony. I waited for a few seconds, and then powered up the Roots Vibrasonic for a good, satisfying HONK. And they still didn't move! Finally, another pedestrian pointed out to the love birds that they were holding up traffic, and they moved over to the side. I lowered my window to ask them why on earth they chose to Occupy CIT Colony, only to see the guy pointing to his ears and gesticulating that they didn't work. They were both deaf. I felt like such a so-and-so. Got down and used ASL to apologize (though I probably told them that their cow had gone to the casino, or something like that).

One of my dad's driving lessons, when I did not slow down after honking at a pedestrian: "What if they are deaf?"

Lessons in humility are never bad for us ... but I don't think you should feel so bad about this. They were deaf, ok, but were they stupid to be wandering about in the middle of the road?

(No offence to the deaf: I am slightly deaf myself. It is a disability nobody takes seriously, especially partial deafness. Either people just don't believe it, or they think you got deaf on purpose just to annoy them.)

Is it me or generally there are more traffic jams in Chennai off late? Jams from old airport-Kathipara at noon yesterday, between Chennai trade center and ramapuram couple of days back at noon and jams continue from hazar khana to airport at night 9:30-10:30

Is it me or generally there are more traffic jams in Chennai off late? Jams from old airport-Kathipara at noon yesterday, between Chennai trade center and ramapuram couple of days back at noon and jams continue from hazar khana to airport at night 9:30-10:30

I just came to office at 12.30 am.

Encountered a huge traffic jam, from Tambaram (below flyover) to perungalathur. The narrow bridge just before perungalathur creating a bottleneck.

I guess there are a lot of cars on the roads these days. My friends who used to prefer bikes for office commute take only car these days, to escape the heat.

A week or so back, I read an interview of the Police commissioner in one of the local papers where he stated that they are not going to enforce it or something to that effect. The reasons cited were
a) Cost of the visibility checkers being high
b) The verdict was due to crime rate being higher in Delhi and not applicable to Chennai.

However this was before the actual judgement wordings were out on the public domain. With the way Delhi and Bangalore Police are reacting, Chennai may catch up as well.